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02/19/2007 Entry: "holocaust"

We're back from Berlin
Actually I'm back from Berlin; Julie and Jakeyboy will return tomorrow night.
I got some nice pictures that I'll post in the gallery section soon.

One place that I liked the most was the new Holocaust Memorial, a vast, rippling sea of quadratic stone blocks. It is in form with a lot of Jewish themed architecture here, like the Dresden Synagogue, combining massive blocks with smooth curves -- the symbolism not hard to decipher -- and also reminiscent of the courtyard memorial in Paris (the name I forget) close to the Louvre with its chopped down stumps of columns memorializing the executed royals and end of monarchy. Also, the Vietnam Memorial comes to mind.

It is a pool, a city, or forest, of blocks -- first slabs, then sarcophagi, then tombstones, then as the ground gently declines in wave, as if in a grave, a realm of the dead surrounded with souls -- individual all as the monoliths sway a-kilter.

The symbolism is minimalistic but multi-layered, still it was the personal experience of walking through the memorial that effects you most profoundly.

It is not a labyrinth per say, it is all rows and columns. But as you see the other visitors briefly intersecting your path and vanishing like ghosts, the become part of the memorial experience. Visitors from all different countries, colours, languages drift past your line of sight in the gaps between the blocks. Not a labyrinth, but also very easy to lose your companions all the same; the halls intermittently echoed with mothers calling for their children in a dozen different languages.

From the edges, you observe it and it seems an easily navigated field of barley. But as you pass through, the ground declines and you are swallowed up whole, buried alive. The memorial gently demands your attention and you can't help but comply. On the other end you come out safely and undeniably changed. With that, and with its straight rows and columns, it's really impossible to stay lost from your companions for long.

Originally, I was against Terence's wishes of going there -- I didn't want to get depressed. As it turns out, you won't. Even at the heart of the lake, you see and hear children giggling and playing hide and seek (we grown ups had to exhibit a great deal of self control not to join in). Julie suggested that maybe the presence of children laughing and playing at the Holocaust Memorial was a good thing. I agree. Maybe that was the best part of all.